TELLING MY DAUGHTER 'WAS PRETTY EMOTIONAL'

Now In A U.S. Jail, 'I'm Here To Face Whatever I Have To Face'

When Steven Iwami was arrested at his Kitsilano home last week on a 1972
conviction for selling cocaine in Chicago, his biggest worry was how he
would explain everything to his 20-year-old daughter Hana, whom he had
never told about his criminal past.

"I thought numerous times about when would be a good time to discuss it
with her," Iwami told The Vancouver Sun in an exclusive interview Friday.
"I was getting real close to that point before this happened -- thinking
that, now she's 20 years old, maybe now's the right time to let her know.
But I didn't want her to carry that burden. It was enough for me to be
carrying it for that length of time."

Iwami, who had been living in B.C. under the name Steve Tanaka for 25 years
and was well-known for his work as a volunteer girls' basketball coach,
remembers wondering what he would say as he dialled Hana's cell phone.

He wanted to talk to her in person, but got her voice mail instead.

"It was probably the most difficult phone call I've ever made in my life,"
he recalls. "I just basically told her that I'd been taken into custody by
immigration and I was going to be going back to the States to serve some
time and that I was very sorry -- because I knew what she was going to be
faced with. It was a pretty emotional message."

Later that afternoon, he tried calling her again.

"By the time I did get through to her she had already heard the message and
she was very upset," he said.

But not surprised.

Hana told him she had known about his past for some time -- her mother told
her a few years ago.

On Friday, Iwami spoke with The Vancouver Sun by phone from the SeaTac
Federal Detention Centre near Seattle, where he is awaiting a decision on
where he will serve the remainder of his sentence.

Iwami talked to The Sun about his past 30 years as a fugitive, discussing
everything from why he chose the false name Tanaka to whether or not he is
guilty of the crime for which he has been convicted.

Iwami was arrested on Thursday, Jan. 24, around noon as he stopped by his
Kitsilano home to pick up some coaching gear after having lunch with Hana.

As he pulled up to his house, he remembers a small, compact green car
abruptly pulling up beside him.

"It startled me, because at first it didn't really click, after all this
time," he said. "But once the doors opened and I saw the kind of people
getting out of [the car], I knew immediately then that something was up."

Vancouver police detective Les Yeo and his partner quickly put Iwami in
handcuffs and took him away.

"They were very nice about arresting me," Iwami said. "They said, 'Thirty
years, that's a long time.'"

Iwami had escaped authorities for so long, he said, he had begun to think
he might never be caught.

"After 20 years, I reached a certain level of relaxation that I hadn't
reached prior to that -- really feeling comfortable in my life," he said.
"[I had] what I thought was a really great life in Canada. A close
relationship with my daughter, being able to coach basketball in the fall
and winter and be out on the ocean as a sports fishing guide all summer. It
was a dream come true for me."

But he said the fear of capture never completely left him.

"Sometimes you may get a bit relaxed, but it's always there," he said. "It
was always on my mind. I always thought about it. And I was always very
careful to not draw any attention to myself. To lead a pretty straight life."

On the day he was arrested, an immigration order was issued against Iwami
to leave the country for illegally being in Canada.

He could have fought the order -- either demanding a hearing or claiming
refugee status -- but decided that would only delay the inevitable.

He was handed over to U.S. authorities the next day.

"I felt it was in my better interest to come down here as quickly as
possible and start serving whatever I was faced with," he said.

What that will be has not yet been determined.

After his arrest, Iwami feared he might have to serve most of the five-year
sentence he was given in 1972.

But on Friday he learned that, because he was convicted under old
sentencing rules, he will be eligible for parole after serving just one
third of his sentence -- one year and eight months.

He will also avoid being charged with skipping bail, because the statute of
limitations on that offence has expired.

Iwami said he has hired a lawyer in Seattle who plans to collect letters of
reference from Iwami's many friends in Vancouver to help him gain early
parole once he becomes eligible.

What he is not doing, however, is proclaiming his innocence.

wami said he doesn't think he was guilty of the specific charge he was
convicted of in 1972: conspiring to import and distribute cocaine.

But he admits he was a drug dealer.

"I definitely was guilty of being involved with drugs at the time," he
said. "Selling cocaine? Yes, I believe I was guilty of that. The actual
charge of importing was totally inaccurate ... but I don't want to say I
wasn't guilty, because I think people would interpret that as copping out
and I'm not here to do that. I'm here to face whatever I have to face now
and get that part of my life past me."

Iwami said he was a straight-A student during high-school in Chicago. He
didn't get into trouble, he said, until after he went to the University of
Illinois and got caught up in the anti-war movement and drug culture.

"The '60s and early '70s, it was a drug explosion at that time. It was
everywhere. It was more of a social phenomenon than it is today," he said.
"It was hard not to get caught up in it."

Iwami said he was 19 when he was first arrested for selling cocaine. The
first time the case went to trial, a mistrial was declared. A year later,
he was arrested again and finally convicted in 1972.

He said he fled Chicago in 1973 while he waited for his appeal because he
couldn't bear the thought of going to jail.

"I just didn't feel that I was able to serve the time," he said.

At first he went to the Netherlands, then he travelled all over Europe --
Spain, Italy, Morocco and Scandinavia.

But Iwami longed to be closer to his family, even though he knew he could
never return to the U.S.

Then somebody he met in Europe suggested Canada, telling him what a
beautiful place Vancouver was.

He left for B.C. in 1976.

Iwami said he flew to Vancouver, then drove up to Whistler soon after.

Whistler was just a small town back then, Iwami remembers, with only a few
hundred people, "if you can believe it."

"I just loved everything about Whistler," he said. "It was a beautiful
place. It was so clean and everything was so pure there. I knew I wanted to
live there for as long as I could."

And it had another perk: "There was no RCMP detachment."

Whistler seemed like a place where he could begin a new life, he said.

The first thing he had to decide, though, was what name to use.

He chose Tanaka -- his mother's maiden name.

"My mother has always been a huge part of my life and a part of my
inspiration," he said.

During the Second World War, Iwami said, his mother was put in a Japanese
internment camp in California while his father was sent to Europe to fight
in the war.

Iwami knew his involvement with drugs had disappointed his parents. He
hoped that in Whistler, under his mother's name, he could live a different
life -- one of which his parents would be proud.

"A lot of the things that I did, I think I did thinking about her and what
she went through," he said. "[The government] came and took away all the
land that my grandfather owned and put my mother in an internment camp and
put my father in the army and sent him over to Europe. They had to go
through a great deal I can't even imagine. Compared to that, what I'm
facing seems like nothing."

Though Iwami tried to carve out a normal life for himself in Whistler, it
wasn't easy.

Without any identification, he couldn't buy a house or get a loan.

"I actively sought out a lot of work that would pay me in cash," he said.
"I did whatever jobs I could do -- some carpentry work and other things
like that."

He also began guiding fishing tours off Langara Island near the Queen
Charlotte Islands -- something he has done each summer for the past 20 years.

"I was guiding at a fairly high level for a very high-profile clientele,"
he said. "It probably paid more than most people would think it would pay."

In Whistler, Iwami started a relationship with Susan Pesut. They had Hana
together and remain close, even though they split up six years ago, he said.

Iwami said he struggled for years about how to tell Susan about his past.

"It's hard to have a normal relationship. How can you start a relationship
and tell the person that you want to be with that you're a fugitive and any
day the law could catch up with you and you could be gone? It's not easy,"
he said. "It becomes pretty obvious the first time she says to you, 'Let's
go down to the States together.'"

Iwami said he feels sorry that Hana had to deal with knowing about his past.

"I'm very proud of her and the kind of person she's developed into,
especially with the adversity she had to grow up with -- realizing at some
point that her father was a fugitive," Iwami said. "She's turned out to be
just an exceptional person and I'm so proud of her, and the way she
conducts her life."

Iwami loved life in Whistler.

"I just began life there again and it just continued on and on until one
day I woke up and I'd been there 26 years," he said.

In September, Iwami moved out of Whistler for the first time -- moving to
Kitsilano to share a house with Hana.

Iwami said he might like to move back to Canada when he is finished his
sentence.

"I definitely feel like B.C. is home," he said.

But has been told by his lawyer that his chances of being allowed to return
are slim unless he gets special approval from the immigration minister.

And that may be for the best, Iwami said.

Having spent 30 years away from his family -- his three brothers and his
parents, who are in their 80s -- it may be time to move closer to them when
he is released, he said.

"Maybe I need to be back in America," he said. "A Japanese family is a very
tight-knit family, very close ... I don't know where I found the strength
to stay away from them and not call them. That was the most difficult thing
of this entire 30 years."

The most rewarding thing, he said, was his work coaching girls basketball.

Iwami played some basketball in college.

But he only really became passionate about it when Hana was in Grade 7 in
Whistler and her elementary school team desperately needed a coach.

Iwami volunteered and continued to coach his daughter all through
high-school and university, and then -- after she left school -- began
volunteering at other schools.

A few years ago, he began volunteering for the Defenders, a community
girls' basketball team in New Westminster. The coach of that team, Winfred
Liem, was also head coach of the Brookswood Bobcats' senior girls team in
Langley. Liem encouraged Iwami to volunteer for the Bobcats as well.

Iwami helped the team reach second place in the provincial finals last year
and took over as head coach this season when Liem stepped down.

Ivan Adrian, athletic director at Brookswood Secondary School in Langley,
said Iwami was incredibly dedicated -- driving out to Langley five or six
nights a week for games and practices.

And team captain Chelsea McMullan said Iwami paid for athletic supplies the
school budget wouldn't cover, had the girls over to his house for dinner
and pushed members of the team to go on to higher education -- sometimes
spending hours on the phone securing them scholarships.

"A lot of what I did was motivated by me feeling bad about what I'd done in
the past," Iwami said.

And a hope, he said, that he could be a mentor to the girls he coached --
helping them avoid the kind of trouble he got into in his youth.

"It was something I became very passionate about," he said. "I saw it as a
way to reach the younger kids and steer them onto the right track. I guess
it's something I wish that I had had when I was younger. Someone to not
only be your coach but be a role model and direct you on the right path in
life."

If he had had someone like a coach to talk to growing up, Iwami said, maybe
he wouldn't have become involved in crime.

But he quickly added: "I don't want to sound like I'm making excuses. I did
what I did. I made poor decisions."

Despite his success as a coach, not being able to travel to the U.S. became
an increasing problem for Iwami.

Whenever one of the teams he coached had an exhibition game in the U.S., he
had to quickly come up with an excuse why he couldn't go.

It became such a big problem, that Iwami said he seriously considered quitting.

"I almost thought if I could just get through this season, I wouldn't be
coaching anymore -- at least not at that kind of level," he said. "It would
have been very difficult for me to give that up. It was a huge part of my
life."

Iwami said he'll miss coaching the Brookswood team.

"It's been the most rewarding coaching experience in the last 10 years for
me, spending time with those young ladies," Iwami said. "I admire those
kids so much for staying together as a team and allowing me to be their coach."

Iwami said he's afraid the ongoing teachers' contract dispute could mean
there won't be anyone to take his place as Brookswood's coach.

"I feel terrible for letting them down and letting the school down," he
said. "If there was anything I could do to be back there to finish the
season with them, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I just hope they carry on with
what we've started. And I hope they have a great ending to whatever kind of
season there is left for them to play up there."

But his coaching days may not be completely behind him.

Iwami said the SeaTac detention centre has an informal three-on-three
basketball league between the prison's different cellblocks.

A few of the prisoners in Iwami's block read about his coaching past in the
newspaper on Thursday and sought him out.

"I guess our team's in last place and they need some kind of edge. So
they've approached me to help them out," he said. "As funny as it sounds,
I'm still going to be coaching."